1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cloud-based platform for enrolling accounts and administering one or more customer loyalty and rewards programs in electronic communications networks, and more particularly, systems and methods for providing and operating a customer loyalty and rewards platform including consumer or customer network-based and merchant-based registration and the management thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, prior art is known to provide digital loyalty and rewards system and methods. By way of example, relevant prior art includes the following U.S. patents and Publications:
U.S. Publication 2013/0073361 for “Methods and systems for offering targeted deals to customers and real-time automatic redemption thereof” filed on Sep. 20, 2012, describes wherein a customer can select from coupons to them, such as offers made to the customer (which may need to be purchased), vouchers purchased by the customer, and the like. A redemption choice is received from the cardholder indicating one or more coupons to ‘load’ onto the cardholder's card product. Information about offers, coupons, vouchers, etc., loaded onto a cardholder's card product can be stored in an offer deployment system. When the cardholder uses the card product to purchase a good or service, a transaction approval request is generated from at least one of a merchant, an acquirer, an association, a bank, and an issuer. The transaction approval request is processed wherein the step of processing comprises at least one of querying the offer deployment system which determines whether an offer loaded onto the cardholder's card product can be applied to the purchase. If so, the value of the offer is applied to the transaction. Preferably, offer value is applied to the amount of the transaction approval request before the request is received by the ultimate financial institution or card transaction processing system responsible for approving the transaction such that the amount of the transaction which must be approved is the purchase price of the good or service less the applied value of the offer. A receipt can be issued to the cardholder wherein the receipt indicates the purchase and use of the coupon.
U.S. Publication 2012/0191525 for “Systems and Methods to Facilitate Loyalty Reward Transactions” filed Jan. 23, 2012, describes wherein Reward communications can be processed as transactions over the communications system in a way similar to credit/debit transactions. The enhanced communications system allows simpler and/or more efficient implementation of complex loyalty programs, and provides new options for creating new loyalty programs. In one embodiment, a transaction handler for the processing of transactions on financial accounts, such as credit accounts, debit accounts, prepaid accounts, bank accounts, stored value accounts and the like, is configured to support transactions for crediting rewards to a reward account and/or transactions for redeeming rewards from a reward account.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,573 for “Multiple party reward system utilizing single account” filed Dec. 31, 1998, describes using one reward/loyalty card for multiple accounts and enabling a frequent shopper reward system capable of tracking performance data of a plurality of members or account holders linked to a single frequent shopper account. Additionally, the document discloses transacting with at least one of the present sub-account holders, calculating a reward level, allocating, to at least one of the present sub-account holders, at least a portion of the determined reward level, and updating the retrieved customer record.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,429,009 for “Universal Affinity System” filed Jul. 16, 2008, describes tracking loyalty/reward programs through the use of a third-party card or other medium. The system enables: a merchant to determine incentives, such as discounts, advertisements, or other offers, for a given customer or set of customers; uploaded these incentives to respective customer “personal account lockers”; and universal ID is encoded as a bar code, the bar code may be provided to a corresponding customer on a variety of different media, such as on an adhesive label that the customer may apply to another device or item, printed on a credit or debit card, printed on a key-chain card, or printed on any other device or item that a customer may be likely to carry with him or her.
U.S. Publication 2013/0054454 for “Wallet Service Enrollment Platform Apparatuses, Methods and Systems” filed Sep. 21, 2012, describes wherein a user may input username and password credentials into the wallet widget (e.g., 210) to get authenticated. The user may have control (e.g., create, view, manage, cancel, etc.) over the individual relationships and may configure permissions for each service they connect to. In one embodiment, the WSEP may allow approved services, issuers and merchants permissions to obtain various information relating to the user and wallet such as consumer profile 225, billing agreement 230, redemption 235, loyalty and rewards 240, coupons/offers 245, wish lists and stored items 250, merchant applications/widgets 255, Value Added Resellers (VAR)/Software-as-a-service (SaaS) commerce wallet plug-ins 260, analytics 265, account or points balance information 270, payments 275, and/or the like. In one implementation for example, the WSEP may manage which services can connect to the wallet. In a further implementation, the WSEP may pass along information from an approved and connected service such as a loyalty program (e.g., STARWOODS Preferred Guest program) to a merchant such that the merchant may provide the customer a special deal, offer or an opportunity to use or exchange points/currency when transacting. In one implementation, approved commerce services, issuers and merchants may be able to push information relating to any of the above to the wallet.
None of the prior art documents referenced herein or any known prior art provides the solutions to the longstanding unmet needs that are satisfied by the systems and methods of the loyalty platform of the present invention.